The present invention relates generally to the allocation of resources and, more specifically, to the transfer of resources between environments.
Design and development projects often require a great deal of computing resources, such as servers. These computing resources are typically allocated to one specific project task at a time. Once complete, these computing resources need to be reconfigured for the new environment. This is a tedious, error prone, time-consuming process. This process becomes especially important when the environments using the computing resources contain potentially competing customer intellectual property data, such as any proprietary data or trade secrets.
Previous approaches have been procedure driven manual processes which often resulted in time consuming problem resolution due to human error. The resource manager or project manager would decide that the computing resource is to be transferred from a first environment to a second environment. The system manager would cleanse the computing resource of any previous intellectual property left over from the previous project. The system manager would then configure the computing resource to operate in the environment of the new project, such as the local area network for the project. A network engineer would transfer the computing resource to the environment of the new project. A mistake by any one of these individuals could lead to delays, disclosure of confidential information, and damage to the project system. A controllable, repeatable process which eliminates many of the human error issues typically associated with the re-imaging process would be beneficial.